Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer

Jeff VanderMeer

The world has changed, and with it the craft of writing. In addition to the difficulties of putting pen to paper, authors now contend with a slew of new media. How will you navigate this brave new world? Get a Booklife.

Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer

by Jeff VanderMeer

ISBN: 9781892391902

Published: 2009

Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and eBooks

Award-winning author, editor, and Web-entrepreneur Jeff VanderMeer (The Southern Reach Trilogy; The Steampunk Bible;The New Weird) shares his twenty-five years of experience to reveal how the world has changed, and with it the craft of writing.

In addition to the difficulties of putting pen to paper, authors must now contend with a slew of new media. This has forever altered the relationship between writers and their readers, their publishers, and their work. In an era when authors are expected to do more and more to promote their own work, Booklife steers readers through the bewildering options:

The world has changed, and with it the craft of writing. In addition to the difficulties of putting pen to paper, authors must now contend with a slew of new media. This has forever altered the relationship between writers and their readers, their publishers, and their work. In an era when authors are expected to do more and more to promote their own work, Booklife steers readers through the bewildering options:

-What should authors avoid doing on the Internet?

-How does the new paradigm affect authors, readers, and the fundamentals of book publication?

-What’s the difference between letting Internet tools use you and having a strategic plan?

-How do authors protect their creativity while still advancing their careers?

-How do you filter out white noise and find the peace of mind to do good work?

-Taking the long view: establishing short- and long-term professional goals

-Getting through rejection and understanding the importance of persistence

-Enjoying and enhancing your creative process and more

“Jeff VanderMeer has written a fascinating book on managing a writing career…. Recommended for anyone who writes, wants to write, or has written and now wonders what to do next.”
—Nancy Kress, author of the best-selling Write Great Fiction

“Absolutely invaluable…a guide to the 21st century for a writer more up to date and accurate than any other book I’ve seen on the market.”
—Tor.com

“If you’re at all interested in writing, especially an eventual career in writing (which nowadays requires considerable skill in self-management and strategic use of promotional tools), Booklife should be on your bookshelf.”
—Brad Moon, Wired

“Booklife is an ambitious and successful attempt at a comprehensive guide to maintaining your sanity while chasing your dreams.”
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

“Many books tell us how to write, but Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife tells us how to be an author….VanderMeer made me think, question my own path, and make plans for a more focused move forward.”
—Mur Lafferty, host and creator of the podcast Geek Fu Action Grip

“Who better than VanderMeer, master of the blogosphere and online innovator, to guide us through the burgeoning, oft-breathtaking realm of new media….”
—Joseph Mallozzi, executive producer, Stargate SG-1

“VanderMeer has struck a new sort of balance with the Internet: charming his dedicated fan base on the Web, creating multimedia promotional tools for his books, and actively seeking out new readers like me in the digital crowds.”
—The Publishing Spot

“Jeff VanderMeer has written a smart practical jungle-guidebook for the wilds of 21st-century publishing—its incredible pressures, joys, poisons, and, most importantly, the dangers of a false sense of control…. Floaty creative types—prepare to be taken to task.”
—Julianna Baggott, author of Girl Talk

“Booklife serves as a much-needed corrective to the sad ‘market your book like a carnival huckster’ approach too often found in books of advice for writers these days.”
—Michael A. Arnzen, Gorelets

“Booklife is to authors in today’s publishing climate what Writer’s Market was fifteen years ago: essential.”
—Michelle Richmond, New York Times best-selling author of The Year of Fog

“Jeff VanderMeer is everywhere. He’s in your house, frightening your cat. He’s on your lawn, and even John McCain can’t get him to leave. He’s applying the poisonous glands of his tongue to the paint of your vintage Chevy. He’s scaling the side of the New York Times building (they’ll arrest them when he comes down, but he’ll never come down!). He’s engorged in the Grand Canyon, entombed in Grant’s Tomb, and impaled on the Space Needle. He’s in the middle of the world’s largest ball of twine. He’s a roving mercenary who kills to earn his living (and to help out the Congolese). He put the bang in Bangkok and the joy in New Joysey. John Waters wanted to make a film about him, but was too disgusted. Harriet Klausner has never had anything good to say about him. Osama bin Laden considered endorsing him, but said even he didn’t hate Western culture that much. And now you’re taking him home with you.”
—Matthew Cheney, TheMumpsimus

“Excellent advice on building a sustainable writing career.”
—Sacramento Book Review

Jeff VanderMeer is the best-selling author of the Southern Reach Trilogy; City of Saints and Madmen, the noir thriller Finch. He also is the editor of several canonic anthologies (the Steampunk anthology series, The New Weird). His award-winning novels have made the year’s best lists at Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wall Street Journal. His nonfiction and reviews have appeared in Washington Post Book World, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times Book Review.

Praise for Jeff VanderMeer

“The best of our contemporary visionaries, who could well be creating the dominant literature of the 21st century.”
—Michael Moorcock, The Guardian

“Jeff VanderMeer is an extraordinary writer…passionate, beautiful, complex, terrifying.”
—Tamar Yellin, author of The Genizah at the House of Shepher

“In the hands of a brilliant writer like Jeff VanderMeer, writing fantasy can be a means of serious artistic expression. In VanderMeer’s hands, it is also playful, poignant, and utterly, wildly, imaginative.”
—Peter Straub, author of Ghost Story

“One of the most literary fantasy writers or fantastic literary writers we’ve got working these days, take your pick.”
—Ron Hogan, Mediabistro’s GalleyCat

“One of modern fantasy’s most original and fearless pioneers.”
—Richard K. Morgan, author of Altered Carbon